[Opinion] Negative Energy?

[Xenophon]

I just watched a Steve Coogan rant (in 24-Hour Party People) about how "negative energy" is pseudo-scientific horseshite. I suppose it is fair to ask whether there's really any need to style energy "negative" when all I mean is that there's energy that's knocking the jelly out of my doughnut. Case in point, if I take a walk in the wrong part of Gaza, the projectile with which the Israelite doth smite me will have slightly less than 1,000 ft/lbs of energy at 100 meters. Any impact will indeed be negative for me, but the energy is just energy. And from Izzy's POV, the impact might well seem positive.

So talking about positive energy or negative energy seems to me a mystification. One confuses his judgments with the nature of the phenomenon he is judging. If I just acknowledge there is energy, I get shut of he need to expel negative energy. It would seem I can assimilate it in line with my own needs and capacities. Or simply deflect or dodge it. Not because of any inherent character in the energy; just because of the intent with which it was sent my way.

Am I missing something?

 

[Aeternus]

I think the term "Negative Energy" is a term used for covering up every unpleasant or more malicious aspect of energy.

The thing is Negative energy can be both seen as a mystification but also as a start of a psychological and even parapsychological career.

Negative energy may be manifested both by people, our subconscious mind, certain images or objects, and what we culturally believe to be bad, disgusting etc.

 

[Amur]

If only nothingness exist and you paint the portrait, then it's more about changing yourself, if you get my point.

Negative energy is just you judging something to make it negative, or collapsing the quantum state to something negative. That is negative energy and it's always both inside you and outside you(thanks to us being internal emotional beings).

That is why banishment rituals are good before you begin your magickal ceremony/ritual, because you dispel the effects of this negative 'energy', be it just an emotion or a symbolic link you've made yourself inside your subconsciousness.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

I have had the privilege to spend large quantities of time around many breeds of negative people, people that get upset easily, who get angry passionately, and desire near-constant comfort. The amount of energy that is wasted in these negative forms is immense and leaves them exhausted and burnt out at the end of each day. Not to mention these people waste so much energy they leave none for growth and live decades without changing a single iota. They Live in an amber-preserving type of ignorance.

I don't believe energy can be negative or positive, but the uses of it certainly could be, and the uses give the energy certain qualities. The other night the family across the street was having this huge shouting match on their front lawn and it was like they were all under the same kind of madness-spell, how else could a grown woman justify screaming "shut up!" At a toddler shorter than her knee at full force?

Evil exists objectively, like darkness, as the absence of light, but both polarities function off the same energy. "Negative energy" is just that particularly destructive and hostile expression of it, from my understanding anyway

 

[Amur]

Had an experience from non-dual reality where my friend had the Crown chakra or Sahasara active and it removed all sense of evil and duality. It emerged it in a way of the rose cross ritual but was all the time active. Unfortunately he died later on.

 

[Xenophon]

I have had the privilege to spend large quantities of time around many breeds of negative people, people that get upset easily, who get angry passionately, and desire near-constant comfort. The amount of energy that is wasted in these negative forms is immense and leaves them exhausted and burnt out at the end of each day. Not to mention these people waste so much energy they leave none for growth and live decades without changing a single iota. They Live in an amber-preserving type of ignorance.

I don't believe energy can be negative or positive, but the uses of it certainly could be, and the uses give the energy certain qualities. The other night the family across the street was having this huge shouting match on their front lawn and it was like they were all under the same kind of madness-spell, how else could a grown woman justify screaming "shut up!" At a toddler shorter than her knee at full force?

Evil exists objectively, like darkness, as the absence of light, but both polarities function off the same energy. "Negative energy" is just that particularly destructive and hostile expression of it, from my understanding anyway

Well said. The problem is the use/expression of the energy, not energy per se. If an ex-g.f. kneecaps me with my Louisville slugger, she---not the bat---is the problem.

Whenever this issue comes up I keep remembering the scene from "Kelly's Heroes." Planes bomb a vital bridge while Donald Sutherland berates his underling, "You see that? Negative waves, Moriarty. Your negative waves!"

 

[Rowena]

I don't believe energy can be negative or positive, but the uses of it certainly could be...

I'd agree with that - for me energy/power, magical, social, or other is morally & ethically neutral - it is the uses it is put to, and the people using it, that have the ethical & moral character.

 

[Mannimarco]

Most of the use of the terms positive/negative energy seem to be a rephrasing of the judeo/christian concepts of good and evil. A more magickally productive way of thinking I've found, is to consider energy that opposes the manifestation of my will to be negative, and energy that promotes the manifestation of my will to be positive. Energies/entities that are light or dark, creative or destructive, may be considered either positive or negative depending of my intention for the situation.

I still haven't come up with a better set of words to easily describe how I'm perceiving energy. Maybe helpful/unhelpful energy? That might sound too fluffy.

 

[Xenophon]

Most of the use of the terms positive/negative energy seem to be a rephrasing of the judeo/christian concepts of good and evil. A more magickally productive way of thinking I've found, is to consider energy that opposes the manifestation of my will to be negative, and energy that promotes the manifestation of my will to be positive. Energies/entities that are light or dark, creative or destructive, may be considered either positive or negative depending of my intention for the situation.

I still haven't come up with a better set of words to easily describe how I'm perceiving energy. Maybe helpful/unhelpful energy? That might sound too fluffy.

Yeah, that's always the problem with entrenched terminology. How to coin something better. I suppose we could borrow a page from the Pentagon's, "friendly fire" and "unfriendly fire." The only problem with "unfriendly energy" though is that it seems to anthropomorphize energy and endow it with will. I guess we might be saddled with what words we have.